Indian astronomical tradition has been characterized by antiquity, continuity and interaction with the outside world. Here we focus on some selected aspects of astronomy-culture interactions;

How knowledge about astronomical universe wasused to regulate human conduct in the joint Indo-Iranian tradition.

How the religious and the ritualistic tradition influenced the astronomical pursuits.

How astronomical knowledge in turn modified the extant mythology.

We also raise an important general question : whenand how does tradition gets frozen and emerge as touch-me-not

Human beings are born astronomers. Ever since they learnt to walk upright they have looked at the sky and wondered. The sky has remained the same but not its meaning.

We can distinguish between three phases in the history of humankind’s relationship with its cosmic environment: (i) propitiatory phase; (ii) negotiatory phase; and the current (iii) expository phase (this probably needs a better name). Each of these phases leads to and coexists with the next.

To begin with, sky was home to divinities who were to be feared and propitiated. As time progressed, human beings felt more secure and became intellectually more alert. Earlier awe made way for curiosity.Skies were now scanned for discovering patterns in the behaviour of the divinities. The knowledge so gainedwas put to practical use and employed to establish a negotiatory relationship with the celestial bodies.

The third phase ,properly speaking, began exactly four centuries ago with Galileo. The cosmic environment was now be subjected to scientific scrutiny with a view to discovering and testing laws of nature. Earlier astronomy had measured angles; now it could talk of distances.The sky now acquired depth literally as well as figuratively.

There is an interesting correlation between the world geopolitics and our view of the cosmos, which does not seem to have been noticed before. For a very long time, the model universe had a centre. The pride of place first belonged to the earth and then to the sun. Even when galaxies were discovered our Galaxy was believed to be the largest. It is in relatively recent times, in the post- World War II era, that the universe has truly become egalitarian. Interestingly, this cosmic scheme has been mimicked on the earth as well. When the universe was centric, the earth, or parts thereof, also had a power centre, be it local or on a larger scale.

The Copernican principle now applies, at least in principle, onthe earth as well.Is this a coincidence?Or is itthat our perception of the cosmos influences the scheme of things on the earthjust as this perception itself is fashioned by the situation on earth?

My concern today is to discuss the interplay between astronomy and culture in general in the Indian context. Much of the discussion belongs to the negotiatory phase described above.I have advisedly used culture in the plural in the title. This is not so much to describe the scope of this review as to draw attention to its limitations.

For a number of reasons, discussed in a different context elsewhere, most of the world attention on India’s past has focused on Sanskrit texts and the associated culture (Kochhar 2008a; Kochhar 2008b).

We have no clues whatever to the astronomical knowledge prevalent during the various phases of thevast Harappan archaeological tradition the roots of which go back to the very beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry in what is now Baluchistan (Kochhar2000). Also the astronomical knowledge residing in the fields rather than in the archivesand especially belonging to communities officially termed scheduled tribes needs to be examined in depth. New scholarship must go beyond the Sanskrit India.

Source material

A discussion that involves ancient India must take note of the nature and limitations of the source material available. Scripts (Kharoshthi, Brahmi) were introduced into India about 3rd century BCE or some what earlier for writing Prakrit languages derived from Sanskrit.Script for Sanskrit itself, the language of Hindu scriptures, was adopted much later.Writing material came from plants or trees and had a short life. Paper was not introduced into India till about 8th century CE. The Vedic texts were in any case forbidden to be written.

Ancient Indian intellectual tradition has been oral. Texts were in the custody of specialist caste groups who memorized them and transmitted them to the next generation by word of mouth. The extant texts would have been supplemented with explanatory “notes” to serve an immediate purpose. What was not considered worth preserving was lost for ever. Also, it is not possible to assign firm dates to any early event or development. It is therefore not possible to construct a connected account about any aspect of early India.

We must cull relevant information from a variety of literary sources. Sanskrit provides texts at three levels. (i) The most important of these is the Vedic corpus, comprising priestly books composed by a large number of authors over a long period of time, which could be as much as two thousand years, say from 1700 BCE to zero CE (Kochhar 2000).The importance of the Vedic texts lies in the fact that scrupulous care was taken to preserve them in their original form. They are thus truly representative of the time of their composition even if that time is largely indeterminable.

The pride of place in the Vedic corpus goes to the oldest and the stand-alone text, Rigveda, containing about ten thousand stanzas. According to Kochhar (2000) it was composed over a period extending say from 1700BCE to 900BCE, although its earliest portions probably contain memories of still earlier time. (Some other texts, though closed later, may contain mucholder matter. )

There are a few stray astronomical references in the Rigveda, but for our purposes the more useful is the Yajurveda which is a manual for actual performance of ritual. It contains some observational material, such as brightstars visible on the journey of the moon ( the nakshatras)as also reference tothe colures.

There is a solitary Vedic text, Vedanga Jyotisha, devoted exclusively to astronomy. It is the least understood of the whole corpus, partly because it was overtaken by developments. The oldest portions could be as old as 1400 BCE. Interestingly it deals only with the movements of the sun and the moon. Zodiacal signs and week days and other pre-Ptolemy elements would be introduced into India about 100 BCE, as part of interaction with the post-Alexandrian Greco-Babylonian world; see below. (Western scholarship especially during the colonial period tended to deny antiquity or originality to ancient India. As a backlash, many researchers have tendedtounduly stretchthe chronology backwards.)

The Vedic texts constitute the heritage of Hinduism. The youngest texts, like Manava Dharma Shastra, or Manu Smriti, which could be as recent as zero CE plus minus, represent transition to Hinduism proper.

(ii) The texts associated with Hinduism as practiced are the Puranas and the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. They were narrated to the public at large and used to be recast to suit the prevailing requirements of the narrators as well as the listeners. Interestingly only additions were made, no deletions.

(iii) In addition there are scientific corpus dealing with astronomy ( as also with health care, that is Ayurveda) whichunderwent deletion as well as addition.

So far we have listed sources in Sanskrit ( the term is used loosely to include pre-Sanskrit). (iv)In addition valuable information comes from Buddhist and Jain sources. The former include material from outside India.

Cosmic order and human ethics

The eternity around us has stood in sharp contrast to the short time-span of the human beings themselves. This chasm has been sought to be bridged by denying death finality. The “burial cultures” have postulated the physical rising of the dead, while the “cremation cultures” have distinguished between the body and the soul, and spoken of the indestructibility of the latter.

There is a beautiful concept linking the divine with the human that goes back to the joint Indo-Iranian times. Called rta in the Rgveda and arta (or asa) in the Avesta, it refers to the cosmic order, not in the sense of impersonal laws of nature as ascertained from the outside, but as an example of righteous cosmic conduct which the humans should emulate.

The sun, moon and other geocentric planets dutifully and predictably orbit around the earth. (Their predictability was a source of comfort, in contrast to thesudden ill-omened appearance of comets, meteors, etc.) The laws regulating the behaviour of these divinities are inbuilt into the system. But similar regulation of human conduct can come only from an explicit prescription of a code of ethical conduct. Emphasis on rta / arta is far more pronounced in the Avesta than Rigveda.

To bring the terrestrial and the celestial closer together the Vedic people assigned the attributes of one to the other. Planets return to their place in the sky; so do seasons on the earth. But human beings are born and die. In analogy with the planets, human beings should also have continuity. To achieve this, the concept of reincarnation was introduced. But in a certain sense planets are condemned to a life of incessant motion. An endless cycle of birth and death would be a punishment rather than a boon. Therefore the concept of what we may calltruncated eternitywas introduced, under the name moksha or nirvana, whereby a soul is liberated from the constraints of future birth.

The cyclic time

Far more important were the human attributes assigned to the gods. The concept of age, birth and death was introduced for the cosmos as a whole, and a cosmic chronology in the form of the yuga system was constructed by suitably scaling up the human calendar. The eternity of the planetary orbits was generalized to set up an oscillating universe without beginning or end.

For the mathematically oriented brave hearts, the technical details are explained inAppendix I. Here we may notice some important features of the scheme.

In the Vedic period, a year was taken to comprise 12 months and 360 days. Multiply these two numbers to get 360×12=4320. Now, suffix this number with the requisite number of zeroes to produce long structured time-spans. The basic unit is a mahayuga (mega-age):

1mahayuga=4.32 million years.

A still bigger time-span, Brahma’s “twelve-hour” day (or night), or a kalpa, is defined as equal to 1000 mahayugas:

1 Brahma’s day=4.32 billion years.

Ancient Indians were probably the only people talking of such large numbers and of the endlessness of the universe. These numbers have been noticed by modern cosmologists in their textbooks as the cosmological timescales indeed turn out to be of the order of billions of years.

A maha-yuga, in turn, is composed of four ages or yugas :Satya or Krta;Treta;Dvapara; andKali. The scheme has some interesting attributes:

üVirtue decreases down the ages in the ratio 4:3:2:1.

üDuration of the individual ages also decreases in the same ratio.

üKaliyuga is thus the shortest.

üWe are currently in the kaliyuga.

The scheme must havebeen found very attractive because it was used in entirely different contexts with the same terminology. These long ages were employed in astronomy. The terminology of the four yugas was also employed by the Puranas to periodizepolitical history going back about 100 generations. This has caused much contemporary confusion.

The scheme was formulated in the kaliyuga itself. It is significant that the present age was postulated to be the kaliyuga. We are now in the worst of times. Things can only improve. Imagine, if we had been placed in any of the earlier yugas, things would have had to deteriorate further before they could improve. It is thus an inherently optimistic scheme. During the movement against the British rule in India, the dark kaliyuga’a making way for satyayuga was repeatedlyinvokedto enhance nationalist consciousness.

A pioneering name in thesystematization of the post-Vedic astronomywas Aryabhata (b. 476 CE). Indian mathematical astronomy , which we may call Siddhantic (since the astronomical texts were called Siddhanta, proven in the end), focused on calculating geo-centric planetary orbits and especially the lunar and solar eclipses.

From 6th century CE till Kepler’s time , Indian astronomers were probably the only ones who could calculate eclipses with any degree of accuracy. The unbroken tradition was alive till as recently as 19th century. A Tamil astronomer computed for John Warren , a French astronomer in the service of British East India Company, the lunar eclipse of 1825 May 31-June 1 with an error of +4 minutes for the beginning,-23 minutes for the middle, and -52 minutes for the end ( Neugebauer 1983:435).

An Indian astronomer adjusted his parameters and obtained satisfactory match between the calculated sky and the actual sky. This match woulddisappear in a few centuries. A brilliant astronomer then appeared on the scene ,and reworked the mathematics. Remarkably although the physicalgoal was the same different astronomers ended up setting up and solving different equations. Mathematics was a tool for planetary calculations. There are very few full-time mathematicians in the Indian tradition ( Kochhar 1993).

Sacred texts influence science

Use of early astronomical data in the ritual profoundly influenced the later course of astronomical developments. The yuga system with its nomenclature was borrowed by the astronomers. Thus the Surya Siddhanta would say that there were 146,568 revolutions of Saturn in a mahayuga, implying an orbital period of 29.4743 years.

Interestingly,at places Aryabhatachose todeviate from the Vedic yuga scheme. He split a mahayuga into four equal parts. Also , heset his kalpa equal to 1008 mahayugas (instead of the Vedic 1000). Since 1008 is divisible by seven, allkalpas,each 4.32 billion years apartwill begin on the same day of the week. Some far sight indeed !

Like the(( divine) Rigvedaastronomical texts were composed in verse, so that an astronomer had to be a Sanskrit poet first. Constraints of metre forced astronomers to use synonyms and take recourse to allusions. This introduced ambiguity at places. More importantly onlyconclusions were preservedand not the arguments leading to them. Generally speaking there was a tendency to present astronomical results as revealed knowledge rather than deduced.

Aryabhata believed in the spin of the earth and said so in his work.This however never became a part of the mainstream. He was severally criticized for this by his “adversaries”. Even later astronomers belonging to hisown school felt so embarrassed that they tried to change aword here and there in his work to convey the impression that the great master like everybody else took the earthto be non-spinning.Today we give great credit to Aryabhata for his belief in earth’s spin. But it is important to keep in mind that our source of knowledge is his critics who were putting Aryabhata’s lapses on record. (As a belated compensation Aryabhata’s glorifiers now falsely credit him with belief in heliocentrism.)

As an analogy, we may note that we know about the deeds ofrevolutionariesfighting for India’s freedom from the charge sheets filed against them by the colonial government.

If astronomy had followed a prose tradition (as was the case with post-Vedic Upanishads) some later scholars could have revived and expanded on Aryabhata’s hypothesis.

Indian astronomers were not aware of the precession of equinoxes. A creative astronomer would adjust his parameters so that his computed planetary orbits matched the observations. With the passage of time thecomputed sky would differ from the actual. This ar necessitated the arrival ofa new mathematician – astronomer on the scene.

Ancient India astronomical effort was society oriented rather than sky oriented. Its aim was to prepare almanacs pinpointing auspicious times for social and religious purposes. It is certain that most if not all students who learnt astronomy did so to become practising astrologers.

The ancient astronomical texts were unambiguously attributed to their named authors. But at the same time their contents were incorporated into traditionally-named texts that were passed off as having been revealed to the chosen ones (e.g. Surya Siddhanta). This pretension to divine connection no doubt increased the astrological market valueof the texts and ensured funding of astronomical activity by the society.

(It is noteworthy that Buddha was against astrology. As long as Buddhism held sway astronomy went in decline. It is only on resurgence of Hinduism that astronomy revived. By the time Buddhism was exported, astrology had become part of it.)

Aryabhata’s influential and pioneering workcloses with the stanza : “This work , Aryabhatiya by name,is the same asthe ancient Swayambhuva [i.e. revealed by Swayambh] and as such it is true for all times. One who imitates it or finds fault with it shall lose hisgood deeds and longevity “. It has been argued-and with justification-that a man ofAryabhata’sknown scientific approach could not have made such a pompous and intimidating statement. While this argument exonerates Aryabhata, it does indict hislater-day followers , and tells us about theatmosphere in which such a statement could be made and attributed to Aryabhata himself (Kochhar 1993).

Old astronomical knowledgehas remained a living tradition even if its role is not so obvious now. Spring and autumn equinoxes as well as winter solstice ( but not the summer solstice) are still celebrated as religious festivals. (Thusspring and autumn equinoxes are honoured by nine-day celebration each, called navaratri. Makar samkranti, the sun’s ingress into Capricorn , on about 14 January,is nominally celebrated as northward turning of the sun . Jupiter’s 12-year orbital period is commemorated by the Kumbh festival, marking Jupiter’s computed ingress into Aquarius.)

Traditionalalmanacs incurrent use still use old prescriptions. They have accumulated an error of 23 days due to precession of equinoxes, but nobody seems to mind. The reason is that phenomena like ingress into a zodiacal sign are not visible to the eye. Since eclipses can be timed now with great accuracy, their computation isnot done traditionally buton the basis of modern algorithms.

Much of the contemporary interest still centres on the astrological universe.( Use of high technology as represented by the computersalong with theinsecuritiesintroduced by globalizationseems to havelent new legitimacyto astrology.)Theinterest intheprogress since, for some reason,extends only to black holes and the origin of the universe. This is probably so because here the difference between the layperson and the expert gets blurred. Allastronomical developments in betweencommonly leave the laypersons rather unenthused.

Science modifies sacred texts

We havealready seen how astronomical tradition was influenced by the Vedic. Butthe traffic was two-way. EarlyVedic mythology attributed the eclipses to a demon Rahu, who is explicitly named inAtharvaveda. Chhandogya Upanishad declares that asoul which hasacquired pure knowledge is liberatedfrom the bodylike the moon becoming free from Rahu. ( Kane V.1: 569) The correct mathematical theory of eclipses, which probably made its appearance in India about 100 BCE or so , points out that for an eclipse to occur the moon should be at one of its nodes, that is, at one of the two points where the lunar orbit intersects the ecliptic. The term Rahu was borrowed from the Vedic texts and applied to the lunar node, especially the ascending node (when the moon crossed the ecliptic moving northwards). The other node was termed Ketu. Maitrayani Upanishad mentions both Rahu and Ketu ( KaneV.1:569). Incidentally this also tells us that theVedantic part of thecorpus was still open say about zero CE.

At a more popular levelan elaboratemythology was created to cut the old single demon Rahuinto two . The head retained the old namewhile thetorsowas called Ketu. Subsequently the concept of Rahu and Ketu travelled outside India also. Burma knew of Rahu as Yahu ( Kochhar 1990) Interestingly,in China while Rahu stood for the ascending node, Ketu denoted the lunar apogee, an identification not known in India.

It is noteworthy that no religious, spiritual or revealed text or folklore has ever contradicted what the people at the time accepted as scientific knowledge. There is a basic difference between scientific tradition and theother societal traditions. Science is inherently progressive. It continually updates itself.There is no concept of frozenness associated with it.On the other hand the textual content of sacred tradition or folklore remains open for a while during which it takes note of contemporaneous scientific developments. But then itbecomes static and at times even may see later scientific developments antagonistically. (Hindu society has tended to accept modern scientific discoveries through the side door, by pretending that they were known to the ancient scriptures!)

Appendix 1: Creation chronology

The Rgveda uses yuga in the sense of a time-span, an age, or a generation. Vedanga Jyotisha refers to a five-year yuga. Atharvaveda mentions in order 100 years, 1000 years, ayuta (10,000 years) and then two, three or four yugas. This suggests that a yuga here means an ayuta. The yuga-system as now commonly understood is set forth in the relatively late Vedic text Manusmrti (1.68-1.86), and expanded in the various Puranas.

In the Vedic times, a year comprised 12 months and 360 days. A human year was set equal to a day of the gods, so that a divine year (Dyr) would consist of 360 human years (yr).The divine year in turn was used to construct an elaborate chronology.

A mahayuga or chaturyuga (great age or four-age) was postulated as made up of four sub-ages or yugas: kaliyuga, dvaparayuga, tretayuga and krtayuga, with lengths in the ratio 1:2:3:4. The names are significant. The two middle ones obviously refer to the second and the third. The names of the two end yugas are taken from the game of dice, kali referring to one, and krta to four. The numbering is thus backwards, kaliyuga being the shortest and the latest.

It will be convenient to use mathematical notation to properly understand the formulation of the yuga system. A kaliyuga is said to contain 1200 Dyr. Let us denote the duration of a kaliyuga by the symbol k and of a mahayuga by m. dvapara, treta and krta are then 2k,3k and 4k respectively, so that

m=k+2k+3k+4k=10k.

For later reference, let us denote a krtayuga (=4k) by s. Then

6m=60k=15s.

We now construct a still bigger time-span called kalpa, comprising 1000 mahayugas. To complicate matters, let us introduce structure into a kalpa as follows:

1 kalpa

=1000m

= 994m+6m

=14 x 71m+15s

=14x71m+14s+s

=s+14(71m+s).

Let us call 71m a Manvantara (Manu’s interval) so called because this span is presided over by a ruler designated Manu. (There are thus 14 Manus.) We can now describe a kalpa in words. A kalpa begins with a dawn equal to a krtayuga. This dawn is followed in succession by 14 Manvantaras, at the end of each of which there occurs a deluge (pralaya) lasting a krtayuga. This complex scheme has perplexed many modern-day commentators. Thus, Ebenezer Burgess in his famous 1860 annotated translation of the Surya Siddhanta declared: “Why the factors fourteen and seventy – one were thus used in making up the Aeon [kalpa] is not obvious” (Ebnezer 1860:11). I think this scheme was constructed working backwards from the neat round figure of 1000.

To sum up so far, a kalpa comprises 1000 mahayugas, with one mahayuga equaling in length ten kaliyugas. It now remains to give recognizable values to these numbers. A kaliyuga was set equal to 1200 divine years. Recalling that a divine year consists of 360 (human) years, we can express the yugas in human years:

Kaliyuga =4, 32,000 yr

Mahayuga=4.32×106yr

Kalpa =4.32×109 yr.

Kalpa becomes the basis for constructing a chronology for Brahma, the supreme creator. A kalpa is set equal to Brahma’s day or night. 360 kalpa pairs define Brahma’s year, 100 years making his life-span. Currently, we are in the midst of Brahma’s life. He has completed 50 years of his life. In the current kalpa seven out of the fourteen Manvantara are over, and so on.

Kochhar, Rajesh (2000) The Vedic People: Their History and Geography (Hyderabad:Orient Longman)

Kochhar, Rajesh (2008) “Cultivation of science in the 19th century Bengal”. Indian Journal of Physics, 82(8), 1003-1082. (Akshoy Datta Memorial Lecture at Indian Association for the Cultivation ofScience, Kolkata.)

Kochhar, Rajesh (2008) “Seductive orientalism: English education and modern science in colonial India”. Social Scientist, 36:45-63. (S.C.Mishra Lecture at 68th Indian History Congress,Delhi.)

BOOKS

Questions about the Aryan identity 200)

“HISTORY cannot be written without implicating the historian,” says Rajesh Kochhar as he begins his journey into the remote past. By any standards, he is an unconventional historian, an astrophysicist who has equipped himself with the tools of diverse di sciplines – ethnography, linguistics, metallurgy, paleobotany, among others – to interpret a period which to this day remains wrapped in mystery. More than the obscurity of the archaeological and scriptural records, the more formidable barriers to unders tanding have been posed by the layers of political partisanship that the study of the Vedas – as historical documents – have acquired over the years.

Interpretations of the Vedas have always been closely interwoven with competing views on the construction of the modern Indian state. Theorists of nationhood as a primordial solidarity dating back to antiquity, cite the authority of the Vedas in self-rat ionalisation. In the early days of India’s struggle against colonialism, the liberal sections of the nationalist leadership were torn by a question of priorities: should nationalist consolidation precede or follow social reform? Lala Lajpat Rai, the grea t spokesman of Hindu nationalism, had a simple solution to the conundrum: “Reform is revival and revival is reform”. While national consolidation through social reform was undoubtedly important, this should be based entirely on rational foundations, said Lajpat Rai. And “nothing can be national or rational which is against the spirit of the Vedas”.

This variety of blind faith has inspired a whole branch of history which today purports to be the truly scientific interpretation, purged of all the political implants. In this context, Kochhar’s work represents an effort to apply the widely accepted rul es of rational inquiry to both summarise the existing state of knowledge of the Vedas and propose some rather bold solutions to its many unresolved questions. He points out that the Vedas began to acquire value as historical documents, as opposed to pure ly priestly records of ritual, with the early European arrivals in India. The term “Arya”, which occurs frequently in the Vedas, was first understood as an epithet that could be applied to the speakers of the Vedic and analogous languages. But later phil ologists, in the flush of their discovery of the common roots of what are today called the Indo-European languages, provided a much broader ambit for the term.

A further note of controversy was imparted by the elevation of the Aryan theory of race – tenuous at the best of times – to a hallowed principle of national revival. The German philologist Max Mueller had a crucial role in this respect. For certain eleme nts within Indian nationalism, the connotations of racial equality that the Aryan theory of race carried, seemed a promise of national redemption. The racial or ethnic basis of the Indian nation was its primeval origin in the days of Aryan glory and its scriptural underpinnings were provided by the Vedas. Since the idiom of nationalism then required every religion to have an encoded system of values, beliefs and practices, Hindu nationalism had little difficulty in casting the Vedas in that role.

Archaeological excavations beginning around 1920 turned up evidence of the Indus Valley civilisation, confronting this school of thought with a serious challenge. This left the Hindu nationalists with no recourse but to seek to assimilate the Harappan ru ins to the Vedic literary corpus. In this enterprise, the antiquity of the Vedas had to be pushed back several centuries and the Vedic river Sarasvati had to be assigned a greater priority than the Indus as a cradle of ancient civilisation.

The initial verdict from the archaeologists was devastating for the pretensions of the Vedic nationalists. As summed up by Mortimer Wheeler, “Indra”, the principal deity of the Vedas, “stood accused” of destroying the Harappan civilisation. One of the ma ny attributes of Indra that attracts frequent references in the Vedas is in fact, “Purandara” or “destroyer of forts”. From here, it was all too easy to build the theory of Aryan conquest over a settled Harappan civilisation, entrenching the supposed ant inomy of Aryan and Dravidian even deeper into the Indian political psyche.

The “Aryan conquest” was a welcome hypothesis for the thinkers who had consistently opposed the Hindu revivalist agenda and read the Vedas as little more than a manifesto of racial separation and social hierarchy. Always a battleground of modern ideas, a ncient India became after this an even more sharply contested political terrain. Rationality could very easily have been the principal casualty of this sharp contest of political interests. Fortunately though, historical inquiry managed to transcend this bitter conflict between contemporary political interests.

The varieties of evidence that Kochhar seeks to marshal in his task of establishing the authentic history of the Vedic people cover a wide range. When examining the literary evidence of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, he proceeds with the robust premis e that these Puranas “are a classic example of how history should not be recorded”. And yet, these oral accounts which were committed to written texts far after the events they purport to describe, remain the only source for the study of ancient history, and “rejecting them outright would be like throwing the baby with the bathwater”.

Kochhar has no alternative, then, but to proceed on the basis of a number of plausible surmises. All genealogies are traced in the Puranas to the primal figure of Manu. Kochhar assumes that the lines of monarchical succession delineated in these texts ar e accurate and that a generation is roughly of 18 years duration. He then tests the narrative against astronomical phenomena of the period, which can be inferred with a fair measure of accuracy. Oblique references to the state of mathematical and geometr ical knowledge are culled out from the text and correlated with known details of the evolution of Indian thinking in these disciplines. His conclusion is that the Bharata battle, as an epic contest of strength between the diverse clans and tribes of the region, must have taken place around 900 B.C. He intentionally eschews the term “Mahabharata’ since the “Maha” he argues, refers only to the numerous embellishments that succeeding years have added on to the original account. This dating, in his view, is infirm when viewed in isolation. But it concurs with the dating that can be inferred from “more reliable sources such as the Vedic texts and archaeology”.

IT is a verity often overlooked that modern territorial definitions have no meaning in the study of ancient history. To study the Vedas (or the first of them, the Rigveda) in isolation from the Zend Avesta, an almost equally hoary record of established r eligious practice from the Iranian region, would be in Kochhar’s view, completely futile. The congruences in the vocabulary and the content are too numerous to overlook and the partly antithetical philosophies strongly suggest an element of political con testation between the adherents of the two orthodoxies. Kochhar follows up this study of the texts with a broader analysis of their linguistic contexts in the larger Indo-Iranian and Indo-European habitats.

A particularly striking feature of the book is its effort to separate the verbiage and the poetic effusions that surround the Rigvedic cult of Soma, (or Haoma in the Avesta) and identify its material basis. As a plant whose alkaloid resin is supposed to produce certain magical effects on its users, Kochhar examines several possible candidates for the category, before finally narrowing his focus to the ephedra plant which is known to grow profusely in the mountainous regions of Central Asia.

The life-sustaining rivers Sarasvati and Sarayu are similarly common to both the Vedas and the Avesta. Modern orthodoxy allows that the Vedic Sarasvati could possibly refer to the Ghaggar river system, which is a rainwater drain for the Shivaliks and lat er broadens its channels as it transits into the Cholistan desert in modern-day Pakistan. Kochhar finds this identification to be rather flimsy for several reasons. Even after allowing for all possible geological and ecological changes over the millennia , it is simply implausible, he argues, to say that the mighty Sarasvati of the Vedic narrative could be in such reduced circumstances as today’s Ghaggar.

The inferences that Kochhar draws are arresting and deserve quotation at some length: “…the river names Sarayu and Sarasvati, that occur in both the Rgveda and Avesta, refer to the rivers in Afghanistan. Sarayu is the same river, Hari-rud, in both cas es, whereas the name Sarasvati applied to the Helmand in the Rgveda is transferred to its tributary, the Arghandab, in the Avesta… The significance of the occurrence of the names Sarayu and Sarasvati in both the texts needs to be fully appreciated… T he most natural explanation for the commonality of these names is that they were given to the Afghan rivers by the Rgveda composing branch of the Aryans. The Iranian branch which came to dominate the area later, decided to retain the names. When the Rgve dic people moved eastwards, they carried these names along and selectively reused them. The names that were not reused lost their geographical identity and became literary terms. This would explain the curious fact that in spite of the Rgveda’s uninterru pted sanctity and the continuous Aryan presence in India, a large number of the Rgvedic names of rivers, lakes and mountains are unrecognisable.”

The numerous “well-established linkages” between the Rigveda and the Avesta, Kochhar argues, firmly rule out “the Indian origin of the Aryans”. Equally definitively, it is simply inconceivable that the Harappan civilisation could have been Aryan. A numbe r of arguments are advanced in support of this assertion, one among them being the absence in known Harappan sites of any well-testified remnants of the horse, a crucial animal in Vedic lore.

There are also serious mismatches between the available archaeological record and the Vedic descriptions, which fly in the face of the effort to identify the Ghaggar as the Vedic Sarasvati and ascribe to it a greater priority than the Indus in the Harapp an civilisation. “Archaeologically,” Kochhar points out, “the oldest (Harappan) sites are in Baluchistan, followed by the lower Indus, lower Ghaggar and upper Ghaggar in that order.” The Rigveda reverses this entire chronology, since the hymns venerating the Sarasvati are its oldest. Archaeologically in other words, there is a pointer to an eastward migration of the Vedic people, which can only be squared with the scriptural evidence if the Vedic Sarasvati is identified as the rivers of Afghanistan.

All this constitutes a very provocative reading of ancient India. Being a relative outsider to the discipline of history, Kochhar is able to advance bold hypotheses that the more conventional historian would stop short of. But the audacity of his inferen ces is underpinned by rigorous scientific reasoning. And he forswears the notion of an Aryan conquest, preferring to argue on the basis of the preponderance of evidence that the reality was one of a gradual migration eastwards, an assimilation of pre-exi sting cultures in the Indus region and of progress into the Ganga-Yamuna basin following the discovery of iron.

As a historian fully implicated in the process of inquiry, Kochhar brings to bear a unique combination of skills. His work is a synthesis of specialised writings in a range of disciplines, leavened by bold leaps of conjecture and imagination. The non-spe cialist would be amply rewarded for the effort put into comprehending Kochhar’s multifarious arguments. For the specialist, they constitute a challenge to innovate and work with new techniques of inquiry, to lay bare the social realities of the distant past.

Did the Vedic people come from outside, or were they the founders of the Harappan civilisation? The question may not much excite the detached professional historian, but has in recent years got implicated in the contemporary politico-ideological controversies. Construction of India‘s ancient past is beset with inherent difficulties. Vedic texts are not gazetteers of their times. Geographical location and chronology are modern questions that we are trying to transport into the remote past. Sacred literary texts can provide some incidental clues but they cannot furnish a connected account.

Vedic texts were memorised and passed on from generation to generation through word of mouth. They thus represent a tradition transmitted through the living. Archaeology, on the other hand, deals with the dead. In the absence of an unequivocal and universally acceptable decipherment of the Harappan script (assuming it is a script), any correlation between the Vedic and the Harappan can only be indirect. While scholars may assiduously sift through the mass of circumstantial evidence, new ground needs to be broken for the benefit of specialists and laypersons alike, especially of the passionate kind.

The key to ancient India lies in the Ghaggar river system sandwiched between the majestic snow-fed river systems of Indus to the west and Ganga to the east. The Ghaggar system consists of, from west to east, the rivers Wah, Ghaggar, Dangri, Markanda, Sarsuti and Chautang. The de-Sanskritised name Sarsuti is advisedly used in place of Saraswati to avoid confusion with the celebrated Rigvedic river. These rivers are formed by a junction of small rivers in the lowly hills of the Shivaliks. The Ghaggar system acts as rainwater drainage for the Shivaliks. The water collected is, however, not sufficient to flow down to the sea, some 1,400 km away. The Ghaggar loses its way in the Thar desert.

There are sufficient reasons to believe that Ghaggar led a far more dignified existence in the past. Actual field work done more than a 100 years ago, fortified with more recent satellite imagery, has shown that at one time Satluj and Yamuna flowed into Ghaggar. It is surmised that at some epoch in the past there were environmental and geological changes which diverted Satluj westwards and Yamuna eastwards. Between Ghaggar and the present-day Satluj, there are a number of braids which probably are a result of the upheaval.

Yamuna’s shifting seems to have taken place in well-recognised stages. In fact, Sarsuti and Chautang flow in old channels abandoned by Yamuna. It should be kept in mind that satellite imagery provides a wide-angle snapshot of the region. It tells us about the old channels of rivers but cannot tell us when these channels were abandoned.

Is the Rigvedic Sarasvati to be identified with the Old Ghaggar? Waters from Satluj and Yamuna would have made lower Ghaggar a mighty river but in its upper reaches it would still be as inconsequential as it is today. It is noteworthy that the Rigvedic hymn (3.33) explicitly associates Beas with Satluj. Also, Mahabharata Adipawan (167.8) narrates a legend that when Rishi Vasishtha threw himself into Satluj with a view to committing suicide, the river broke into a hundred channels. One wonders whether the dry channels were already in existence and woven into the legend.

Literary references can only be suggestive; they cannot provide definitive proof. The best way to answer the above question would be to conduct rigorous scientific experiments to determine the hydrological history of the Ghaggar system and the neighbouring dry channels. It should be possible to determine with reasonable accuracy the epoch(s) when Satluj and Yamuna moved away from lower Ghaggar and when the latter reached its present pitiable state. If it turns out that Satluj and Yamuna ditched Ghaggar, say 10 millennia ago, Ghaggar would automatically be ruled out as a Saraswati candidate.

The much-maligned Indian caste system has become a powerful scientific tool in this era of new biology. Caste is defined by endogamy: Members of a caste group tend to marry among themselves. It has indeed become possible to identify genetic markers characterising different endogamous groups and determine the “distance” between them. The Parsi community (whose sacred book Avesta is closely related to Rigveda) migrated into India some 1,500 years ago and has remained strictly endogamous. (As an aside, it may be remarked that it is the only “species” that is planning its own extinction.) Parsi genetic markers should be compared with corresponding markers from Pathans and Baluches as well as from Kashmiri Pandits (who have till recently remained geographically isolated), Iyengar Brahmins from Tamil Nadu and Namboodri Brahmins from Kerala. The exercise is expected to be quite rewarding. If Parsis turn out to be extremely closely related to, say Pathans, then the case for the Aryan arrival from the north-west would be strengthened.

Reconstruction of the past is an important part of the exercise of nation building. A nation’s heritage should be based on hard, scientifically tested, facts and not on vague notions born out of cultivated ignorance. History is not the mythology of the dead. A nation should be able to look at its past straight in the eye. Only then can it cope with the present and plan for the future.

If the torch of history is to illuminate, it must obtain new batteries from science. As things stand, the torch can only be used to hit one another on the head.